They fell into a rough rhythm after that—Brian loosening soil, Cooper clawing through it the second he paused. Mud splashed up Brian’s jeans. Rainwater glistened in the deepening hole. Then Cooper suddenly froze. With one hard scrape, he yanked something loose from the mud and dragged it into the open.
Brian stared. It was a child’s shoe. Small, worn, stiff with age, one strap hanging loose. For one horrible second, his mind went somewhere dark. “What the hell…” Cooper lunged back toward the hole, and Brian grabbed his collar again. Then he saw it beneath the disturbed earth: not bone, not cloth, but a hard pale edge, too straight to be natural.